Tag Archives: Supreme Court of the United States

All the nation that pays attention is paying especial attention
to the U.S. Supreme Court this week as it considers health care
reform. Chris Henry is working on a story about a local woman who
says she has insurance and has received benefits because of the new
law. She will be taking a letter to Rob McKenna, Washington
attorney general, asking him to drop the lawsuit he is in along
with 25 other states. I wouldn’t look for McKenna to reconsider at
this point.

When I had a chance to sidle up to the McKenna the governor
candidate when he visited the area in January,
he joked that the odds were 5-4, a reference to the idea that the
decision could be a 5-4 split among the justices.

Calling it “The” decision is actually incorrect. Today the court
hears arguments on whether it should be considering the law now, or
wait until the mandate actually kicks in, which is 2014.

The mandate decision, whether Congress can write a law forcing
you to buy something, is the key question, and those arguments are
on Tuesday. On Wednesday is an argument over whether the entire law
should be scrapped if the mandate is killed.

Should you like to be informed as the debate goes on, allow me
to provide you several links that will prepare for conversations
around the
watercooler on Facebook.

PolitiFact.com provides the primer Everything you want to know about the
health care law* and also gives you a chance to check
out the truth or falsehood of several claims about the law. I’m not
sure why there is an asterisk in the headline. Maybe it’s an
unexplained admission that “everything” probably isn’t
accurate.

On NPR’s All Things Considered is a piece about this week’s
activities. The package begins with a story about a guy who sells
places in line to get into the hearing for $36 an hour. The first
customer placed someone in line on Friday, for Tuesday’s arguments.
Further on Nina Totenberg responds that she doesn’t know which side
will win, but Clarence Thomas is the only one predicted to be
solidly against the act. Four justices — Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Elena
Kagan, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor — are predicted to be
locks in favor of the law and the constitutionality of Congress
mandating what people have to buy. Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito
are considered in play and Anthony Kennedy is seen as a swing vote.
An interesting tidbit: Chief Justice John Roberts could end up
voting to uphold the law if there is already a 5-3 vote among the
associate justices, because a 5-4 decision “wouldn’t be good for
the court as an institution of the country.”

The New York
Times and ABC News both have stories on
a 1942 Supreme Court decision that serves as the basis for
arguments on both sides.

Finally, on Salon, an academic explains some of the
motivation behind how judges may rule. Andrew M.
Koppelman, John Paul Stevens Professor of Law and Professor of
Political Science at Northwestern University, goes into some detail
explaining some of the difficulty for the justices in overturning
the law. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t do it, but there are
consequences that go beyond the new things the law introduces.

When you read the follow-up news stories on each day’s
arguments, you could very well get an inkling of where this will
end up in June. Both sides have reason to be optimistic, and to
worry.